What did you do in KSP1 today?

[kraden]

2 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

This will make vehicle design incredibly interesting when crew are involved. Particularly for Eve, where you have to have very high acceleration even just to overcome the planet's gravity.

Hello probe cores, here we come!

I also have a parts pack which adds a command module with an integrated probe core. I expect this will become more handy than just training new kosmonauts. 

[septemberWaves]

16 minutes ago, kraden said:

Hello probe cores, here we come!

I'm actually incredibly pleased that they introduced this feature. It will provide some encouragement to use probes in spite of the new difficulties posed by the communications network, and will also necessitate (for those of us who make launch vehicles as subassemblies) either making separate launch vehicles for crewed and uncrewed launches, or simply tinkering with launch systems until they have reasonable maximum acceleration.

I think also, when the mods I need are updated, I'll have to play around with my replicas of real world launch systems to ensure that crewed launchers don't make kerbals pass out.

Edited October 2, 2016 by eloquentJane

[Dire_Squid]

9 hours ago, hazard-ish said:

In my most difficult and tedious mission yet, I sent Jeb on an 84 year mission to Eeloo and back, requiring 12 gravity assists overall, using a craft that weighs just 3.6 tons! So much effort went into this one, from building the rocket and all the cars, writing custom configs for my visual mods to make Eeloo look just right, to actually performing each of the many many stages in the video! I really hope you like and appreciate what I've done here!

Enjoy!

 

*Give you a slow, and VERY sincere applause*

That was amazing! The gravity assists, you eyeballing the planar and coplanar orbital alignments, the efficiency of usage of the ion booster, xenon tank and electrical power, the maneuvering on Eeloo itself, AND the return to Kerbin...

 

Good sir... YOU.... have INSPIRED ME to learn more about gravity assist maneuvers!

[David104]

Finally completed my Eve Base incl. fuel truck to fill up the ascent vehicle. Its is parked 4 km away for the return to orbit in order to hopefully dock with the mothership...if everything works..haha..:D

[eddiew]

After the delicate intricacies of sending the Odyssey and Thunderhawk to Laythe and Vall, it seems that the engineering team needed to blow off a little steam and build something big, dumb, fast, and loud.

Enter Space Y's 7.5m parts, given a tune up with KR&D, investing science points to get the vacuum engines to 500 isp. A similar investment is made into the standard issue aerospikes (much to Lyssa Kerman's satisfaction after her perilous ascent from Eve on pure stock engines) bringing them to an equal efficiency. With these mighty engines in their arsenal, and the sheer lifting power of a 7.5m launch stage, the team prepares a lander massing a solid 69 tons. Packing Jay, Thystle, and River into the somewhat stingy cabin on the top, mission control flicks the switch and sends the mighty Grenadier on his way.

Total launch cost: 1,350,000 roots. A new record!

However, there are 1,250,000 roots available for just two contracts: planting a flag on Tylo and investigating an anomaly on it. Combined with the worlds first for landing+walking on Tylo, the mission should break even as soon as boots hit the ground. That, and the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed some wheels sticking off the side of the lander. There are indeed a pair of Ranger Rovers strapped onto it, which will generate contracts over time for modest rewards.  And of course, all the science instruments are stuck to the return pod, so there should be a recovery factor in the region of 150,000 roots if the aim is good.

(Ed: There seems to be something of an theme with my conventional rocket missions whereby I arrive with the transfer stage still half full. In this case, the plan was to leave a "small" fuel can in orbit, but since I the engineering team forgot to pack any actual monoprop the docking is going to have to be done with the main engines. Having the transfer engine still present means I at least have some relevant thrust and won't have to flail around doing 180s and trying to reverse the lander using only momentum.)

[RX2000]

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/254841825975020883/097232818184D11B66224EC07243AA646A7672DF/

Landed on Minmus!!! Yay!! I hopped around on the planet with my lander (took quite a bit of extra fuel on it) & managed to visit 3 different biomes on the 1 trip.  So I came back with almost 1300 science! Hopefully I can send another lander to the Mun again soon with some extra dV & maybe hop around & do the same thing to get a bunch more science.

[septemberWaves]

@eddiew I am both impressed and terrified. Mostly terrified. The 7.5m parts from SpaceY are ominously powerful, and whilst I have designed launch vehicles that use them in the past (of which I believe the maximum payload was around 1200 tonnes), I've never found a payload large enough to require launching one. I mean, the fact that you're using the launch vehicle upper stage as a Jool/Tylo transfer stage too makes it seem pretty reasonable, but even so, that is some truly monumental power contained within those rockets.

[eddiew]

Just now, eloquentJane said:

@eddiew I am both impressed and terrified. Mostly terrified. The 7.5m parts from SpaceY are ominously powerful, and whilst I have designed launch vehicles that use them in the past (of which I believe the maximum payload was around 1200 tonnes), I've never found a payload large enough to require launching one. I mean, the fact that you're using the launch vehicle upper stage as a Jool/Tylo transfer stage too makes it seem pretty reasonable, but even so, that is some truly monumental power contained within those rockets.

I could probably have launched on 5m... but it was already the full height of the VAB  Using bigger part sizes tends to keep it simpler and more rocket-y ^^

[septemberWaves]

4 minutes ago, eddiew said:

I could probably have launched on 5m... but it was already the full height of the VAB  Using bigger part sizes tends to keep it simpler and more rocket-y ^^

I'd probably have gone with the same 7.5m upper stage, but then transition down to a 5m launch vehicle with two to four near-identical cores as boosters depending on required thrust (with the central stack thrust limited because I rarely bother with asparagus staging). That way the rocket doesn't get inconveniently tall but can still be launched with a smaller vehicle. It also makes for an interesting appearance if you have a larger upper stage than lower stage (I personally like it the most to transition from a 5m upper to a 3.75m lower, but that's just because it tends to look nicest with my vehicle designs).

Edited October 2, 2016 by eloquentJane

[Francois424]

Today was the big day !  I launched my Mothership to go to Jool for a Jool-5.  Docked it to the payload section and started to plan my ejection burn...  Then BOOM !

My computer goes dark.  Screen, Cable-Modem, speakers... everything works except my computer.  Unplug/Replug ... Nope.
Wth??  So open it up, and start going thru everything one piece at a time.  Remove Video Card = PC boots, plug back it = PC doesn't want to turn on.

(I spent the entire afternoon trying to figure it out)
All I did was plug my Video card nto my spare PC to test it (it worked) then put it back in my main rig... and it worked.   serious whisky-tango-foxtrott moment right there.
So the Kraken decided to strike at my PC it seems. I could not set sail for Jool, but at least I'm up and running again. 

So I only have 2 pictures for my afternoon :

The Final maneuver to dock the Payload section to the Mothership.  It's an older model of Mothership, dating back to the late 0.23.5 era but still a favorite of mine for long missions !

All fueled-up and ready to go...  until the 5 hour black-out that paralyzed the KSC this afternoon.  Jebediah, Bob, Bill, Valentina, Sugee, Isaselle and Kertris will have to wait another day for departure.

 

Not sure I'll have time to attempt the Jool-5 this version afterall (unless Soon^TM gives me an extra week), but a beauty shot of the fully assembled thing was too good to not post it.
I hope everybody else's afternoon went beter than mine ! 

Edited October 3, 2016 by Francois424

[kraden]

7 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I'm actually incredibly pleased that they introduced this feature. It will provide some encouragement to use probes in spite of the new difficulties posed by the communications network, and will also necessitate (for those of us who make launch vehicles as subassemblies) either making separate launch vehicles for crewed and uncrewed launches, or simply tinkering with launch systems until they have reasonable maximum acceleration.

I think also, when the mods I need are updated, I'll have to play around with my replicas of real world launch systems to ensure that crewed launchers don't make kerbals pass out.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to see this coming in 1.2. I also look forward to the need for communication satellites being stock. The idea that kerbals can pass our from g-forces puts a grin on my face, and having to design craft around that and communicatons is highly intriguing to me.

[fourfa]

I've been playing with a lot of spaceplanes lately.  I started really diving into efficiency and drag, AeroGUI etc, and that led to designs that hide as much as possible inside cargo bays.  The one exception has been the landing gear, which are always visible externally and exposed to drag.  I wondered what a usable design that fixes that would look like?  That led here:

Spoiler

 

I call it the Pantsplane.  I had tried out hiding gear on small SSTOs inside the inline docking ports, which doesn't actually occlude drag, and gives you a terribly narrow track width anyway.  So I needed two side-by-side cargo bays, and that required a lot of the Mk2 bicouplers or 'pants.'  Kind of a fun exercise.  It ended up basically looking like my RaPTOR SSTO mainly because I think it's pretty.

This thing is insanely overpowered - punch go, pull up to 30 degrees, and circularize - and way overcomplicated for a simple 6x crew transport.  And (particularly in the new 1.2 aero) stowed landing gear drag is truly negligible.  This is strictly a cosmetic exercise.  But it's fun to fly!

Edited October 3, 2016 by fourfa

[Starman4308]

Getting back some steam in this save; I think this time I may be able to actually pull off something interplanetary in 6.4x Kerbin.

The "get 24 level 3 Kerbals" project is nearing completion; the general plan was to launch a 4-man capsule to a brief stay in solar orbit, followed by pre-emplacing 4-man landers in both Mun and Minmus orbit, to which a second crew capsule would rendezvous. Adding in all that, 4 test flights, 1 badly borked lander launch (decided to ram it into Minmus rather than risk a lander with so little fuel), and the 20 "rescue Kerbal from orbit" contracts involved, that's a total of 49 launches. Two groups of 4 have already returned, and the very last group is about to land on Minmus.

Crew vessel: C/SM powered by the 40 kg "Spark" engine from MRS (I love that engine to death), which is efficient, albeit almost painfully slow maneuvering a roughly 16-tonne capsule. Beneath is the very, very large cryogenic 2nd stage (hydrolox), beneath that is a kerolox/solid 1.5 stage.

Mun lander: Also powered by a Spark. Massed 15 tonnes after booster sep, a smidge overengineered, dV readout misleading. The intent was that the first 4 radial cans would be for orbit insertion, the second 4 would get me landed, and then back up to orbit on the central tank; what usually happened is that the booster would get me 50 m/s into the descent, I would drop the orbital insertion cans midway through an almost agonizingly slow descent, and the landing cans midway through ascent. I was usually able to top off the crew capsule with resources remaining in the lander after post-landing rendezvous.

Minmus lander: pretty much the same, but much lighter (6 tonnes lander). Usually spent more of its propellant than I was comfortable with getting to low orbit, so I usually topped it off from the crew vessel. Hooray for everything using MMH/NTO!

The first Duna transfer window is approaching in a couple weeks; I'm going to have to split launch priority between that and finishing off my business in the Kerbin system. I probably won't send too much in the first window; just a set of relay sats, a semi-permanent science orbiter in polar orbit, and at least a lightweight Ike lander. Not much has been designed/built except for the major interplanetary relay sats.

Ordinarily at this point in a 64k career, I'd be building a space station around the Mun and Minmus, and chucking semi-reusable 1-man landers and giant 40-tonne refueler probes at them. Not this time; I've written configs for Karbonite to replenish Real Fuels, and hacked up a script which spat out engine configs for all O/U/L+ engines for 900 ignitions, albeit at 90% thrust. I've decided it's semi-plausible that the Mun and Minmus have reasonable concentrations of ice and/or hydrates, so I'm going for hydrolox-propelled, fully reusable landers with ISRU operations on both moons. The only thing I'll need to send along periodically is food and MMH/NTO to top off the RCS systems.

Mining Station: over 10 tonnes of hydrolox storage, should be able to produce 3.1 L of LH2 and 1.5 L of LO2 per second. Plenty of KAS attachment points, more solar panels than I've ever deployed before, over 10,000 charge (including capacitors)... and it'd still shut down within 10 minutes during night time. This is why I'm sending two per moon; while it'd be less mass to throw a nuclear reactor at the problem, I like to at least pretend Kerbals are slightly nervous at the idea of radioactive waste dropping all over their home planet if the launch fails. I probably would have made the mining station even bigger, except for the fact that I don't have large landing legs or 3.75m engines yet, and hydrolox tanks are enormous due to the very low density of LH2.

Orbital hauler: basically just a giant insulated fuel tank on legs, with a trio of Spark engines. Much like the mining station, I probably would've built it even bigger if hydrolox was denser.

The last piece of the ISRU puzzle will be rovers, as I don't trust myself to land within KAS linking distance of the mining station. I just don't have rover wheels yet, and I'm saving up my science for extra-large docking ports for the stations!

[MagicFireCaster]

11 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The node exposing the interesting name of your other ship, showin in KAC. Also, you can't embed an imgur album. That functionality broke some time ago.

 

Oh i see is my jool ship i posted progress on it in this same thread moths ago 

[JadeOfMaar]

!

Made a Federation Runabout lookalike to fit inside the Enterprise and Prometheus. It's not quite done. When fully tested it will be published on KerbalX.

Spoiler

SSTO confirmed. Requires USI Malemute Rover, some RCS mashing, and downtimes to refuel itself, but requires no cheat menu.

 

Edited October 3, 2016 by JadeOfMaar

[MagicFireCaster]

Got to minmus to start building  a base

[Grenartia]

Completed work on my first stock SSTO (i.e., further testing and refinement, adding new capabilites, increasing propellant mass to account for the increase in mass, figuring out the best flight profile, setting up action groups, etc.). All in all, it works like a dream. It can only send 2 passengers (and no cargo) to a 100km orbit, but since it has a docking port (conveniently located right in front of the cockpit, in case I ever want to try flying a whole mission from that perspective), and is powered by a NERV, this shouldn't be too much of a limit once I get an orbital fuel depot up and running. 

I figure if I want to do a mission to, say, Laythe, I could probably construct a mothership for it to dock with, which could also carry cargo.

Speaking of cargo, I also started work on a cargo SSTO, but its still got a few teething problems (I probably overengineered it).

[eddiew]

Discovered that this ladder (which works fine on the launch pad!) doesn't have an [F] climb out option to get back into the ship when landed on Tylo. Tis the moon of the devil  

I will be hacking gravity to allow the crew to re-embark, because this is clearly a bug, but... it's kind of immersion breaking 

Also, the lander is now crabwalking down the hill at 0.1m/s...

Don't really know what to do other than wait and see if it hits a flat spot and stops. So far we're down to 1.8 degrees incline and still moving :/

*edit* Aha, at 1.1 degrees and after raising the gear, the slide slowed to 0.01m/s and the climb out option has returned! Apparently it's not an option when vessels are "moving" but the threshold for "stationary" isn't actually "not moving"...

Edited October 3, 2016 by eddiew

[eddiew]

(Ed: Well, aside from the bugs with sliding down hills and disappearing/reappearing climb out buttons, the Tylo expedition is actually doing quite well. After sliding about a kilometre, the lander eventually settled out at just 1cm/s, after which the game accepted that it wasn't "moving over terrain" and clambering and saving became possible once more - although it did require resting on the engines rather than the landing legs.)

After waiting a few days for their polar orbit to bring them around over the chosen landing coordinates, the crew separates the lander from the fuel cache/transfer stage and prepares for descent. It's a foregone conclusion that landing accurately on Tylo is going to be hard, and there won't be any option to relocate, so the engineering team packed Grenadier with a pair of Ranger Rovers.

Tylo, it seems, shares Laythe's propensity for exploding anything science related placed upon its surface, but a handful of experiments survive and some good data is gathered.

The original mission plan has the team splitting up, with River and Thystle taking one rover to an adjacent biome while Jay investigates the anomaly coordinates... but Thystle doesn't think that's a very good idea and decides make a few adjustments. It may not be the prettiest rover in existence, but it should be just as resilient as the original models. At least we hope so, since one of the wheels blew up when it was detached.

Tylo turns out to be surprisingly kind to rovers, and while there are a couple of flat spins, there seems to be no risk of flips or rolls. Plotting a course southwest, the crew think they can potentially cover an additional three biomes within about 50-100 kilometres - and it would be a shame to waste the opportunity for science. Let the road trip commence!

Edited October 3, 2016 by eddiew

[elpollodiablo]

Realising that i will probably never use it, because of 1.2 around the corner and KSP's limitations with real scales for planets (Aeolis Mons at least seems too big to render), i decided it's time to wrap up my RSS career by building the "end of invention". A rocket with end-game engines, massive enough to justify it's price with a (to me) unmatched cost/convenience ratio.

The "Big Stick"-Class:

Mass: 23'004.957t (with SMURFF)
Payload: 502t
Height: 177.2m (payload around 18m)
Width: 33.9m (payload 3.5m)
Price: 9'991'516

 

It comes with an integrated waste disposal system and barely makes it to a 450km LEO.

Still, only 4 (5 if you want an autopilot) mods. This might make it into version 1.2, i wonder how far it will take me in a Kerbin sized solar system

Edited October 3, 2016 by elpollodiablo

[UnusualAttitude]

Got my fleet of ships to Mars for my first crewed mission to the surface...

...but transfer and insertion used more of the shuttle's fuel than expected. It no longer has enough to land safely.

Principal Investigator Bartdon is foaming at the mouth at the thought of coming all this way without going down to the surface, so the Phobos/Deimos Prospector is commandeered in order to go and search for water ice beneath the poles of Phobos.

If they can extract enough H2O and return it to Low Martian Orbit, then the shuttle will be able to make a safe descent to the Martian surface. Meanwhile, Bartdon calms his temper by enjoying some of the most incredible scenery the Solar System has to offer.

[eddiew]

7 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Got my fleet of ships to Mars for my first crewed mission to the surface...

And I think I've just decided to do RSS in 1.2. Or maybe stock scale RSS, so's I have a fair chance of actually going to places  

[UnusualAttitude]

5 minutes ago, eddiew said:

And I think I've just decided to do RSS in 1.2. Or maybe stock scale RSS, so's I have a fair chance of actually going to places  

Well, once you've understood the intricacies of Real Fuels, ullage requirements, limited ignitions and so-on, it's just a question of making things bigger. Much bigger... 

[capi3101]

(1.1.3) Spent the Friday night working on getting a sat up into a K-orbit over Kerbin. Got it there - then realized that it needed to have both an accelerometer and a thermometer...reverted with the intent of doing it on Saturday. But while I was playing, I started smelling something hot and electronic. My computer's PSU had been making growling noises in the prior weeks so I decided to check the fan; it had stopped. Got it restarted with a puff of canned air but I decided not to restart the computer again until I'd replaced the unit - hot and electronic smells usually mean that something critical has already melted...

Idiot me forgot to copy off my save file before shutting the computer off. In fairness, I had an older computer in an ATX case with the same wattage so I thought it'd just be a simple matter of swapping them out. Nope. Old computer had only 20-pins on its PSU; my newer box needs 24-pins. What's the going rate these days for a 350W ATX 24-pin power supply? Whatever it is, I'm pretty well guaranteed it's money I don't have...

 

So last night on my work laptop, I started up a new career save. Got as far as putting Jeb into a polar orbit and collecting sci samples and EVA reports from all of Kerbin's biomes before calling it a night; all in all, not much progress lost over my current career save. I say that - Bob hasn't been to Mun and back twice yet...

 

[Galileo]

6 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

What's the going rate these days for a 350W ATX 24-pin power supply? Whatever it is, I'm pretty well guaranteed it's money I don't have...

A 350w?  Very,  very affordable.  I bought a 750 w thermaltake for $50 a few months ago from best buy. I would have to imaging a 350 going for no more than $30 or less

Edited October 3, 2016 by Galileo